Secure enclosures utilized by transient users for temporary or long-term storage of personal articles are found throughout the globe. A typical example is a safe in a hotel room. These are configured to allow a guest who is renting the room to lock personal items within the safe by using a unique personal identification number (PIN), biometrics, RFID, magnetic stripe card, etc., in the case of a safe having an electronic locking system, or by using a key for a safe with a traditional mechanical locking mechanism.
In addition to the electronic locking system, electronic safes usually include additional powered systems such as a user input (e.g., keypad), a visual display, a microprocessor, a motor driver, etc. To simplify installation and to avoid occupying an electrical outlet, these electronic safes are often powered by batteries. Maximizing battery life is critical in order to minimize labor and time associated with the manual replacement of batteries. Energy conservation in these existing electronic systems is paramount.
A challenging situation for the hotel arises when a guest's stay is concluded and they leave the hotel, but the safe is left in the locked condition. Here, the hotel needs to send personnel to open the safe and inspect the contents. This is a sensitive operation as the hotel personnel cannot know if the safe will be empty or if it will be filled with valuable objects. The latter can lead to a potential for theft by the hotel personnel and subsequent inquiries from the departed guest could lead to an awkward claim and counter-claim argument as to what was stored in the safe when it was opened. To address this, existing operational procedures often require a delegation of multiple staff members to be sent to a locked safe in order to have additional witnesses when the safe is opened. This is an expensive and time consuming procedure, and is particularly wasteful if the safe happens to be empty.
In another circumstance, a guest might use the safe during their stay and at a later time claim that its contents were stolen. To resolve this issue with the guest, the hotel typically draws an audit trail report from the electronic safe which provides the timestamped locking and unlocking events effected with the guest PIN code, as well as any staff override operations, and any configuration and maintenance operations. However, the audit trail of existing systems is limited to data regarding the locking and unlocking of the safe and does not provide any information concerning the contents of the safe or even whether anything was actually placed into or removed from the safe compartment during locking and unlocking events. This lack of detail makes the claims of the guest very difficult to support or deny and, in some instances, results in the hotel having to compensate the guest for both real and fake claims.
While prior art implementations of such safes have provided convenience and a degree of security to the user, the above stated limitations make their operation costly to the hotel and allow for abuse by the user. This creates unwanted monetary losses to the hotel that is offering the safes as an amenity to their client. Moreover, minimizing energy consumption of such safes is of critical importance in these systems, and existing attempts at addressing the above limitations have been unable to strike a reasonable balance between operational integrity and energy consumption.
What is needed is a system for securing personal articles, for example within a safe, that provides heightened security and privacy to the user and to their personal articles, and that provides the purveyor of the safe with a convenient and efficient means for determining the content of the safe when necessary, all in a manner which minimizes energy consumption.